


Only The Stones

by karanguni



Series: Historical Enough [2]
Category: 21st Century CE Japanese Go Players RPF, Edo Era Japanese Go Players RPF, Japanese History RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, Ghosts, Not Quite Hikaru no Go, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2021-02-25 06:20:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21931348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karanguni/pseuds/karanguni
Summary: Japanese Go Masters vs. AlphaGo, or: Cho Chikun, Iyama Yuuta, and Ichiriki Ryo walk into a bar.
Series: Historical Enough [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1863547
Comments: 15
Kudos: 28
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	Only The Stones

**Author's Note:**

  * For [yhlee (etothey)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/etothey/gifts).



> HAPPY YULETIDE! :D :D :D I hope you (and your go-playing family!) enjoy this, ah, adventure into the absurd...
> 
> Contextual notes are at the bottom for passers by unfamiliar with the general material.

When AlphaGo defeats Fan Hui, 2-dan, the Go world responds with a vague rustling sense of, _oh, that has been a long time coming._ Artificial intelligence beating a 2-dan: how quaint! A good attempt! But Go is the most complex board game on earth, and there's no computer that has existed or will ever exist that might come anywhere even close to beating a true master.

When AlphaGo, less than half a year later, defeats Lee Sedol 9-dan four games to one, the Go world goes insane. There is gnashing of teeth and there are wails of lament. A 9-dan, and not just _any_ 9-dan, but Lee Ssen-dol – only one of the most gifted professionals to have come out of Korea.

The truth is, the sceptics had been right the first time around: no computer will ever beat a human at Go. AlphaGo isn't a _computer_.

* * *

Oh, AlphaGo isn't a ghost, either. That sort of thing only happens in works of fiction like _Hikaru no Go_ , or in real life if-and-only-if-and-when desperate, singular men get drunk and do stupid things.

* * *

After a long evening at a Japanese Go Association conference (perhaps _conclave_ is the better term, since non-professionals had been denied entry and nothing was conferred about excepting a passionate-slash-horrified group reaction to Lee's loss) Cho Chikun, Iyama Yuuta, and Ichiriki Ryo walk into a bar.

'I'm only eighteen,' Ichiriki says as they walk through the door.

'Bloody hell,' Cho sighs. ' _Really,_ Ichiriki-kun? You decide to say that out loud _now?_ '

'Better than... saying it out loud... later?' Ichiriki ventures.

'I think Cho-sensei means you should not have said it out loud at all,' suggests Iyama.

So Cho Chikun (9-dan, winner of the titles for Kisei/Meijin/Honinbou/Juudan/Tengen/Oza/Gosei &c. &c.), Iyama Yuuta (9-dan, same as above, just more, and also younger) and Ichiriki Ryo (8-dan, and _eighteen_ ) walk _out_ of said bar and go to a different one.

'Not a word out of you,' Cho warns Ichiriki, then acquires them all a back room and rather a lot to drink. Ichiriki pours for all of them. Cho drinks his entire cup in one go; Iyama takes one sip; Ichiriki ponders how this is his life and manages something in between.

'So!' Cho declares, putting his cup down for it to be refilled. 'How unusual for the three of us to have ended up here together.' A fair comment, since their personal circles do not much overlap, but no one had really been watching where they'd been going after the conference/conclave/wake. Ichiriki had followed Iyama who had followed Cho, really. Cho demolishes a second cup. 'Who is your sensei, Ichiriki-kun? And Iyama, are you here to chaperone me or what? Actually, who cares – let's just watch that fourth match again.'

Ichiriki is bullied into taking out his mobile phone and putting the fourth match of Lee Sedol vs. AlphaGo on. He has the video bookmarked. He _may_ have the video downloaded. Neither Cho nor Iyama seem to know enough about technology to care.

They watch. The fourth match is the only one out of the five-match set that Lee had won, that _humans_ had won, that _mankind_ had won.

'He's insane,' Cho says cheerfully as Lee conducts his way through his extreme _amashi_ strategy. 'Look at that. Absolute madman. Hell of a player.'

'High risk, but high reward,' Iyama agrees, a little more demurely.

'There's hope for non-machine players yet?' ventures Ichiriki.

'Maybe,' Cho says, eyes hooded as he watches the tiny screen. 'Maybe.'

* * *

'Ho ho ho, Merry Fuckaurgh damn shit _bah_ ,' Cho Chikun swears on the 5th of January the following year as he, Iyama Yuuta, and Ichiriki Ryo walk into a bar. Once is accidental, shocky coincidence; twice is more or less tradition.

'Christmas was two weeks ago,' Ichiriki says politely, now wise in the ways of lying by omission to barmen as he serves them all sake.

'No!' Cho slams his hand on the table.

'Time flows in only one direction!' Ichiriki protests, alarmed. 'It's a fact, Cho-sensei!'

Cho blinks. 'What? No, I meant not _sake_ , Ichiriki-kun, we need something stronger, like whiskey, or maybe cyanide.'

On the 29th of December, a mysterious contender had appeared on Internet Go platforms, wreaking havoc and laying waste and salting the earth and... Anyway, a contender had appeared on the South Korean servers and begun a reign of terror. Gu Li, a pro from China, put up a 100,000 yuan bounty, which, _well_. What else did pros have to do all day besides sit around playing Go?

It had taken everyone's heads. Gu Li himself, a star-studded host of other Chinese players, national and world champions, 65 year old Nie Weiping who got twice the _byo-yomi_ time for making a move and therefore spent twice as long suffering the agony of loss. All told, fifty-nine storied professionals lost matches to this "Master" player before it was revealed that it was, in fact, just AlphaGo having a fun time. That announcement had come in yesterday.

'How do you feel about this, Mr. Thirty-Four?' Cho asks Iyama.

Iyama holds his cup up for a refill.

* * *

It takes less than half a year for Cho Chikun, Iyama Yuuta, and Ichiriki Ryo to walk into a bar. Again.

'Are you twenty yet?' Cho demands. 'I don't even think I want to bother getting a room.'

'Next month,' Ichiriki says gloomily.

'I'll get the room,' Iyama says, pulling out his wallet because what is money when your career – one based on a single-minded, obsessive preoccupation with a board game – seems to now be dissolving into existential crisis.

This time, it's all over the newspapers again. Cho has a paper copy that he takes out and spreads across their table, weighed down by the sake tumbler on one end and a small plate of snacks on the other.

WORLD NO. 1 GO PLAYER KE JIAN DEFEATED BY ALPHAGO AT THE FUTURE OF GO SUMMIT, blazes today's headline.

'I'm never using Google again,' Ichiriki pledges.

'It's not the end of the world,' Cho muses, well into one of the later stages of grief now. 'This is probably a good thing for Go, or it will be in the long run. We'll all learn something from this computer thing.'

'It's not a computer, it's a computer _programme_ ,' Ichiriki says.

'What's the difference?'

Ichiriki thinks about it. 'You can – It – It's – an algorithm that – with machine – augh,' he gives up.

'It's retiring,' Iyama pipes in, reading through the whole article. 'DeepMind has announced that the team is being disbanded because there is... nothing left to _do_ , in Go.'

'Okay,' Cho says, after a long pause. ' _Now_ I'm angry.'

'What do they mean there's nothing left to do?' Ichiriki frowns.

'It means they think the problem is solved,' Iyama says, folding up the paper neatly. 'That there are no more Go games it can't win; nothing new to learn.'

'That's impossible,' Ichiriki says.

'It's what they think,' Iyama shrugs, helpless. 'It's beaten pros consistently, without any losses, and every single time it does so it...' He trails off. Iyama isn't a very expression person: his life mostly focuses around the goke and the goban and crushing any and all of his Japanese opponents while wondering why he does so badly internationally. He's almost glad that there are now probably more than a few overachievers around the world who are feeling exactly what he is feeling now. 'It makes these _moves_.'

The other two nod. It would be one thing if AlphaGo seemed soulless. Earlier versions and other programmes had – that's why they'd made fun of the Alpha vs. Fan games: they'd been mechanical. Not these games. These games had the element of surprise in them each time: not incoherent luck, but real... innovation. Someone had used the phrase _a divine move,_ and it's really no wonder everyone is having a crisis of faith, when put that way.

The games are, in their own way, very beautiful. Very alien. Very good.

All three of them drink.

'After this,' Cho says into the thoughtful silence, 'let's go back to my place and watch _The Divine Move_.'

'Which one?' Ichiriki asks gloomily. 'There were several that were that good.'

'No, no, _The Divine Move_ ,' Cho rolls his eyes, switching momentarily into Korean for the title. 'It's an action movie about Go.'

Iyama and Ichiriki slowly turn to _look_ at him.

'An _action_ movie...?' Ichiriki asks.

'About _Go?_ ' Iyama finishes, hopefully.

'Ex-badduk player loses a game and ends up framed for murdering his own brother. He gets out after seven years and wants revenge.'

'For his brother?' asks Ichiriki.

'For the lost game?' asks Iyama.

'Bottoms up, boys,' Cho declares.

* * *

'The _goban_ is going to get covered in blood!' Iyama moans as, on screen, something violent happens too close to a go board.

'You need a life,' Ichiriki, drunk as a dog, slurs from next to him. 'And that's coming from me, a pro, an 8-dan pro.'

Cho, happily at home, wiggles his socked feet and continues drinking.

By the end of the movie, the three of them are properly sloshed.

'Thissis better than a bar,' Ichiriki says, a sober, serious drunk.

'How are we gonna,' Iyama makes broad motions with his arms. 'Fix this?'

'Can't undo history,' Cho chortles. 'Time flows _one_ way!'

Ichiriki blushes. 'D'you, d'you think it'd beat the old masters?' he asks. 'All the greats? The Edo players?'

' _We_ could beat the Edo players,' Iyama says, pained. 'Please. Go hasn't _stagnated_ , you know?'

'Do I?' Ichiriki asks, turning to the other two. 'Do you?'

'Haven't met any Edo pros because they're all dead,' Cho says cheerily. 'I wonder what they'd think if they were here today.'

'Which ones?' Iyama asks, now intrigued by the absurdity of the idea.

'Honinbou Shuusaku,' Ichiriki promptly declares.

'Honinbou Jouwa,' Iyama says, frowning at Ichiriki for his uninspired choice.

'Oota Yuuzou,' sighs Cho. 'Because he had such _hair_...'

' _You called_?' comes a chorus of voices, so loud in their heads that all three of them jump. It's like being spoken to by God.

Three gods, Ichiriki realises as they start in wide-eyed alarm at the three figures walking themselves out of Cho's wide-screen television. It all seems like a very bad imitation of _The Ring_ , except they're getting Go masters from yesteryear.

'Is that,' Ichiriki breathes. 'Are those–'

'Yes,' Iyama says, wide-eyed.

'We felt a disturbance in the life force,' the one with hair says. Oota Yuuzou, it must be: he who refused to shave his head to play in the Castle Games because he loved his luscious locks too much. They are indeed luscious. They look a bit like Cho's hair. He comes to sit in front of them, one elbow on top of a knee and rakish as he smiles. 'You have a problem?'

'Arghghhgh,' Ichiriki says, and faints.

* * *

'In sum,' Honinbou Jouwa says after some four very bizarre hours of explaining – among other things – the Internet, modern Go tournament formats, and the current geopolitical situation in extreme brief, 'you are being beaten by a computer.'

'Yes,' Ichiriki says, with utmost formality and also complete and utter shame. He'd ended up responsible for most of the explanations; none of them had felt very good.

'What's a computer again?' Honinbou Shuusaku asks.

'It's – arghghghg,' Ichiriki says, putting his face in his hands.

'A group of smart people make something that isn't human but that can think very fast and use it to win games,' Oota summarises.

'It's... something... like that?' Ichiriki nods.

'How does it work?' Oota asks.

'Um,' Ichiriki says.

Cho smiles at all assembled. 'Why don't we just _ask_?'

* * *

Honinbou Jouwa, Honinbou Shuusaku, and Oota Yuuzou walk into a Google office.

'I'm going crazy,' Ichiriki hisses at Iyama. 'We're all going crazy. Can't anyone else _see_ them?'

'No,' Iyama whispers back. 'I thought you watched _Hikaru no Go_ on repeat as a child.'

'I did,' Ichiriki responds. 'I didn't think it was _real!_ ' A pause. 'Mostly.'

'Maybe only 8-dans and above can see them,' Cho murmurs, serene. He gives Ichiriki a gentle shove on the shoulder. 'Now go introduce us.'

This is not an easy task. Ichiriki has to do two things: one, remember the feeble cover story they'd made up to get on a conference call with the DeepMind team responsible for AlphaGo and two, ignore the way three ghosts are wandering around the building lobby marvelling at things like glass pane windows, colour printing, and the advent of trousers.

'We'd like to thank you for allowing us to meet with the AlphaGo team,' Ichiriki says weakly to the Google staff members after greetings are exchanged. 'On behalf of the Go Association,' he adds, because the cover story is going to require work from them to pass as natural, i.e. Ichiriki alone will be writing an Association report on this visit.

The Google team is full of smiles and polite inquiries after their health as they are ushered towards the meeting room where the video conference will be conducted. Ichiriki bites back the urge to reply with _My liver does not appreciate your contribution to Go history._

What follows is the world's strangest meeting. Ichiriki is infinitely glad for Iyama's ability to bullshit his way through polite speech with the learned ways of one who has to do a thousand more press conferences than the rest of them, because it allows him to focus on asking the right questions.

'How does it _learn?_ ' Shuusaku asks from behind his shoulder. 'Ask them how it learns.'

'No,' Oota interrupts. 'Ask them how it decides to _use_ what it learns.'

They exchange looks, like two eternal rivals who have been dead but now are alive again and might be able to have a go at it a second time. Ichiriki mentally prepares himself to be the vessel through which two of his Go heroes play out their personal tension. He has to shift uncomfortably at the thought, because the way they _look_ at each other is a little...

'Well,' the DeepMind team lead is saying, 'we provide the stones and the rules of the game as input and nothing else to start with. No past games, no advice on what moves to make – we used to, in the past, but we realised that it actually makes things more complicated than we need.'

'Learning from good games isn't how it learns?' Ichiriki asks.

'No, not at all. AlphaGo learns from itself – it plays game after game against itself starting with random moves, and uses that training to judge how likely moves are to lead to victory. We use a Monte Carlo tree search to compute a vector of search probabilities in order to come up with recommendations for plays, which are then evaluated by a single deep neural network that ...'

The team lead pauses, aware that he has lost them. Ichiriki pauses, aware that they are lost. Someone somewhere in the room clears their throat. Cho-san is staring up at the ceiling and twiddling his thumbs together and trying hard not to smile. Oota is examining the projector with decidedly more interest than he seems to be expending on the answers being provided by the DeepMind team.

'In the course of training,' the team lead says after a strangled moment of self-evaluation, 'AlphaGo played 4.9 million games.'

Oota looked up. 'Million?'

'Five million?' Ichiriki parrots.

'In three days,' the team lead finishes.

' _Three days!_ ' Oota gapes.

'Once it was done learning how individual sets of moves might lead to a win or loss, it developed a way of evaluating which plays should be chosen,' the team lead forges on. 'So it both learns and then applies?'

It's a good metaphor. The ghosts nod. Ichiriki nods. Iyama nods. Cho nods, because he might be nodding off.

'How much thinking time did the programmes have?' Ichiriki asks, wondering how it compares to normal _byoyomi_.

'Oh,' says the team lead, relieved for an easy question. 'Five seconds.'

 _Arhghghg_ , Ichiriki thinks, but manfully stops himself from saying it out loud.

At the end of the visit, the team lead very generously offers to send a writeup ("in condensed form!") to them, and then also offers to spin up an instance of AlphaGo for them to play against for the next thirty days.

'We have optimised the amount of resources AlphaGo needs to run on to the point where we can run it on the cloud without a problem,' the team lead says. 'Give it a few minutes to spin up and it will be ready for you at any time.'

'Tell them we will play an exhibition match in a fortnight,' says Honinbou Jouwa.

'We will play an exhibition match against it in a fortnight,' Cho pronounces with gusto before Ichiriki can scream _no, no, oh god, please no_ at him. They haven't got a _insei_ 's chance in major title hell! What is this going to do for Go except _embarrass Japan for all eternity?_

'Goodbye!' Ichiriki says desperately, because he knows exactly what is coming next regardless.

* * *

After eight hours of continuous play of man-slash-ghost versus AlphaGo, Ichiriki decides he doesn't care whether he's being possessed by the greatest of the greats, like hell is he sitting in seiza in front of his laptop anymore while two of the greatest of _his_ time stare over his shoulder at the screen as they lose.

Lose, and lose, and lose and lose and _lose._

'We are taking shifts,' he says finally, pushed beyond polite speech and into something quite direct. 'Or I will die, I am sorry,' he adds at the last moment.

After nearly _twenty four_ hours of continuous play across three shifts, something shifts in the air.

'We'll leave this one to you then,' Honinbou Jouwa says to Oota.

'We've seen enough,' Honinbou Shuusaku agrees. 'Of all of us, you know best what to do.'

'Be fabulous?' Oota asks, demonstrating his frightening ability to pick up modern linguistics. He'd commandeered Iyama to put on Netflix and had been paging through modern reality television at an alarming pace.

Honinbou Jouwa, already fading, frowns. Honinbou Shuusaku, going but more slowly, says, 'You know what to do.'

Then they're gone, leaving just Oota in the real.

'Okay,' proclaims Oota, phasing his way to Cho's side. 'It is very unfortunate that I cannot drink, but at least I can nap. It is time for one.'

'You sleep?' Iyama asks, bewildered.

'Metaphysically,' Oota beams at them. 'More importantly,' he points a finger around the room. ' _You_ sleep. Sleep! This computator is going nowhere.'

'Computer,' Ichiriki mutters.

'Can you possess someone?' Cho asks, ignoring him. Of course, _of course_ that's the station his train of thought pulls up at. 'Like me?'

'Maybe?' Oota says, and his incorporeal form... shimmers.

Cho blinks, and then his posture changes entirely.

'Wow,' Oota-Cho-Yuuzou-Chikun says, opening and closing one hand into a fist. 'I must correct myself. I _can_ get drunk.'

Ichiriki lays down on the tatami, puts his pillowed up jacket over his eyes, and opts to pass out.

* * *

Iyama ends up cooking them breakfast the next day, if you allow "goes out to the nearest convenience store and brings back oden and an assortment of premade food" to count as cooking.

'Cho-sensei,' Ichiriki asks carefully as Cho unwraps with complete delight an onigiri from its plastic wrapper. 'Are you... in there?'

A blink. 'Yep,' Cho chimes. 'We're talking.'

'In... your head?' Iyama ventures, pouring out tea.

'Yup,' Cho nods, and then he's gone again. 'What is _this?_ ' He flaps the plastic wrapper around.

'Plastic,' Iyama says.

'Modern magic,' Ichiriki says, more experienced than him at answering ghosts now. 'Could we focus, Cho-sensei? Er. Oota-san.'

A hand gets waved in his direction. 'I know what to do,' Oota says to them.

'Burn down the servers?' Ichiriki asks hopefully.

'Doesn't the computator live in the clouds?' Oota asks, tilting Cho's head in a _distinctly_ un-Cho like fashion. It's supernatural, as it ought to be.

'The cloud is – arghgh,' Ichiriki says, sadly.

'What will you do?' Iyama asks, incapable as ever of being distracted from the game by trivial human things like the fact Cho Chikun-sensei is being possessed by a ghost who seems completely unphased by a bajillion centuries of technological advancement soon to come to bear against his individual capabilities.

'If I understand this opponent of ours,' Oota says, 'I know what to do. That's what I'm good at, you know.' He picks up a wrapped toothpick, mumbles _modern magic_ at it, then tears the plastic away and begins to pick his teeth. 'Knowing opponents. It's all in here–' he taps his temple '– and in here –' he taps his heart.

'Computers don't have hearts or minds,' Iyama says, sounding as confused as Ichiriki does.

' _Exactly,_ ' Oota grins, pointing the toothpick at him. 'Exactly.'

* * *

The first week of preparation makes sense to Ichiriki. Cho and Oota together study the fifty released _kifu_ of AlphaGo's games played against itself, and then at the sixty _kifu_ of AlphaGo's games played on the South Korean servers. Life makes sense again. It's like being an _insei_ in the best of ways: all he has to do is not have a life, speak to his parents only over the phone, and spend the rest of the time ensuring that beer, snacks, and tea get supplied to Cho-Oota-sensei(s) in never-ending quantities. Iyama gets called on for game discussions, and while they don't exclude him Ichiriki is well aware that in the land of the mighty, the 8-dan is not king. It is a blissfully ordered existence of limited responsibility.

The second week, on the other hand...

'All of Shibuya,' Oota declares. 'We're going to go through _all_ of Shibuya. Where is your money?'

Iyama, brown-noser, holds up his credit card.

'That's money?' Oota asks, appalled.

'It contains multitudes,' Iyama says.

Ichiriki tries not to resent him, because _sure_ it does when you've won _that_ many titles.

* * *

They do nothing that second week but shop and drink and, _once in a while_ , study _kifu_. Oota does not bother to play against AlphaGo before the exhibition match.

The day of the match itself feels like a nightmare in the making. Ichiriki puts on his best suit, the one he might conceivably wear to funerals (e.g. of his dignity), and is infinitely glad that Cho is going to be the one playing.

'Oh, you're not getting away with it _that_ easily,' he's told when he arrives at the Go Association, where one of the playrooms has been converted into a news media circus.

'What?' Ichiriki asks, alarmed.

'We're playing the moves live on a board while some peon punches in the numbers to the computer,' Cho says, himself for a moment. He slaps Ichiriki on the back. 'Sit down and saddle up.'

Iyama 9-dan, Iyama 1-more-dan-than-Ichiriki-dan, smiles at them from the recorder's seat, where he's _actually_ volunteered to do a paper record of the game. What, in case the computater cheats? Ichiriki has no idea.

This close to Cho, Ichiriki realises something: there's alcohol on the man's breath. A _lot_ of alcohol.

'Cho-san,' he hisses, trying not to draw attention to them while simultaneously wanting to jump up and down screaming. 'Are you _drunk_?'

' _Shitfaced,_ ' Cho whispers into his ear as they pose for a photo, a DeepMind placard in their hands. 'Smile!' A hundred camera flashes go off.

* * *

Ichiriki starts off the game with dread. He's playing on behalf of an artificial intelligence that might just prove – for the _n_ th time now – the inferiority of human skill to pure computation. Everything he's loved about Go for all of his life – the depth of the game, the combination of thinking and feeling, the interplay of intuition and experience – seems to hang in the balance, counterweighted by a programme that uses sheer numbers of _random plays_ to win, and win, and win.

AlphaGo is playing white. Ichiriki puts down the first stone. The clicking noise as it settles against the board seems to ring in his ears for a long time.

Oota plays like a madman. His response to the opening seems, ironically, almost random in turn. At this distance, Ichiriki is painfully aware of the smell of drink on Cho's breath.

The third, fourth, and fifth plays carry on apace. It feels too fast for a professional game; it is _terrifying_ to be placing stones down in less than ten seconds when it is his turn, and agonising to wait for Oota to move. Cho is possessed, but so is Ichiriki.

But then something changes. The flow of the game is, indeed, drunken, but the swaying back and forth from battle to battle isn't incompetent. It's _random_ , but not incoherent. Oota plays corners and middles and ups and downs and combinations that make no sense at first but then open up to give him a few moku here, a few moku there. It isn't the neat divided up battlefield of normal _souba Go_ , where players chip away small gains when chance lets them. This is a fractal of games-inside-a-game, spinning crazily at first only to emerge out into sense.

AlphaGo isn't – It isn't _confused._ It isn't failing to react to Oota's drunken-master plays, but it has to fight. Ichiriki can feel it in his fingertips as he plays out its moves: it _hasn't seen this before,_ or if it has, not in this combination, not yet. They're playing against that version of AlphaGo that has only five million training games, not the many tens of millions that other iterations have, and it almost shows. There's something new here, recombinant and _emerging_.

It's a... good game. Not an entirely human game, and not an entirely artificial game, but something different. Randomness blossoms from order, and then order from randomness, and black and white end up tumbling over each other in a game that lasts what feels like a lifetime.

Oota wins. Oota wins _without_ AlphaGo retiring: strangely, the programme chooses to play all the way through _yose_ before it all comes to an end.

The whole room seems to exhale at the same time when they stop. Ichiriki has to squeeze his hands tight against the tops of his thighs as he bows to Oota.

* * *

Cho Chikun, Iyama Yuuta, Ichiriki Ryo, and Oota Yuuzou walk into a bar, and the whole bar buys them drinks until it isn't obvious that Cho-sensei is way ahead of them on the path to divine inebriation.

'Hey,' Cho says to Ichiriki.

'Yes, sensei?'

'You're _finally_ twenty...'

They eventually pass out on Cho's dining room floor at god knows what hour in the morning. Except for Iyama, of course, who stays up to tipsily replay the game from earlier today over and over and over again, his face lit up by the glow of his laptop screen, black and white pinprick stars in his eyes.

* * *

They're sober eventually. They're very sober by the time all four of them sit around a go board reviewing the game.

'You got drunk,' Iyama says.

'I got very drunk,' Oota agrees. 'So that I would play my openings erratically, and not think too much about it. The thinking came later, when I had to fight all the battles, but...' He shrugs, smiling. 'I often play while drunk. It seems like something that has fallen out of fashion.'

'How did you know it would work?'

'Lee Sedol's win,' Oota says. 'I did not _know_ , but I guessed. All the other games by pros: everyone tried very hard to win. Of course they did. They used their heads and all their knowledge to find the most likely path to victory – and that is not going to work, not against this _computer_.' He smiles at Ichiriki, strangely kind. 'It can do what we cannot do, what we will never be able to do, a thousand times faster. Five million games is five thousand lifetimes. But even it has to prioritise, no? So it chooses to study the moves that are most likely to lead it to victory. It can study many of them, but this one hasn't learned _all_ of them in every combination. I chose to play like a complete novice, just like it once started from nothing: the only difference is that once I had made my mistakes, I could turn them into victories, victories that are hard to play ahead because the beginnings are so unusual. It succeeded this time. It will not again. The machine will learn. They will put another five thousand lifetimes into it, and then another five thousand after that, and eventually its brain will be so big that every possible game that will ever have been played will have been played inside it's...'

Oota taps his temple again, and smiles.

'So we've lost,' Ichiriki deduces. 'You think we'll never beat an artificial intelligence? That we should all retire like Lee Sedol because it is an undefeatable entity?'

'Of course not,' Oota laughs. 'This "AlphaGo" will be the god of the Go universe, and that's the point. We are not gods.' He looks around the table even as he leans back on his hands and lounges. 'Well, I might be, a little bit. _You_ are not gods. You are mere mortals, searching for a divine move. That is not a _board game_ , that is a game for game-players. You and you–' he points between Iyama and Ichiriki. 'You and you –' Between Ichiriki and Cho. 'You and you –' Between Cho and Iyama '– and everyone else in this wonderfully connected world. Do you see it?'

Oota leans up and points at Iyama's laptop on the dining room table. 'The DeepMind whoever people, they have no idea how the computer makes its decisions. It is just... magic, modern magic. They can't explain it. Somehow up in the clouds, _every single game_ that could be played is being played. The worst games between beginners. My games against Shuusaku. The Ear Reddening Game, the Triple Ko Game, your Atomic Bomb Game, the games by peoples all over the world and all across the Internets: all of those games are _inside the clouds._ God isn't a player: it is a librarian. It's beautiful. The DeepMind people cannot explain _why_ AlphaGo did what it did: only the stones know. And the books that can be borrowed from that library – the inspired moves, the novel plays? We must know _how_ to read them.'

He traces one ghostly hand over the played out AlphaGo vs. Cho Chikun/Oota Yuuzou match. 'I learned many things during this match. If I had played my own Go, I would have learned other things too. I would have had to take risks and do things I have never done before and that _my_ world with _my_ Go would never have thought to do. Iyama-kun, when you play your international matches, you lose a lot.' Iyama blushes; he hadn't been aware of how Ichiriki had been made to hunt down the win/loss records of all three of them during one of Oota's rabid study sessions. 'It is not because you are bad: it is because you are limited, and there are other types of Go out there in the world. This is... another type of Go. All the types of Go. I am jealous: the more you play AlphaGo, the more there will be times you will _see_ something amazing. A new _joseki_ , a new _fuseki_ , a new _yose_ , something it would have taken us a century to create.'

Oota beams at them all. 'And when you see it? You will put it here –' he places a hand over his heart and bows at them. 'You and your students will not take five million games to come to know it, or so I hope for the sake of teachers everywhere. The next generation will have intuitions we can only dream of, and it will not take _clouds_ to store those instincts. It will all be in the flesh. Humanity will tease out from that great library the future's most celebrated plays and games. When they _are_ played it will be by one man against another: two human beings whose lives will be too short to fit a million games. Yet in their short, short lives, they will do something divine.'

He sits back. Ichiriki feels his heart swell. Iyama is silent, reverent. Cho-sensei is... smiling.

'Ichikiri-kun always reminds us that AlphaGo is not a computer; it is a computer _programme_ , no?' Cho-sensei says to the room at large. But then he looks at Oota and comments, 'It has always been the ghost in the shell that matters.'

Oota bows.

'Are you going now?' Cho asks Oota.

'I cannot stay,' Oota nods. 'It was an honour to be allowed to play with you.' Then he winks at the old man. 'And you have _fantastic_ hair.'

Cho bows deep, head to the ground. Ichiriki scrambles to follow, and feels Iyama do the same next to him.

When they look up, Oota is gone. There is a very old comb atop the go board, and the ghostly smell of sweet sake that is there one moment, then gone the next. Laughter and joy vibrate in their bones for a fleeting second, then that is gone too, if not forgotten.

Cho picks the comb up and inspects it. He puts it away, then comes back to sit adjacent to the board as a spectator. Ichiriki and Iyama are chivvied into position on either end.

'Only the stones know,' Cho says thoughtfully, sorting out the played pieces into their respective _goke_. He places black in front of Ichiriki, and white in front of Iyama. 'Shall we ask them to teach us?'

Ichiriki and Iyama look at one another. They bow.

Ichiriki waits for the sound of the first stone. He knows it will be beautiful.

**Author's Note:**

> My apologies to Hikaru no Go and AlphaGo, and anything else to do with Go. Especially not being a Go player myself. :3 
> 
> Here are some end notes for context:
> 
>   * AlphaGo is indeed a programme that beat some of the top Go players in the world. It was designed by DeepMind, which was later acquired by Google.
>   * All these players are real. Cho Chikun is an elder statesman, Iyama Yuuta one of the current greats, and Ichiriki Ryo a rising star. For all that is holy, Google how Cho Chikun looks and you will see what I mean. Iyama Yuuta really is an overachiever, and Ichiriki Ryo really is tiny. Oota and the Honinbous are real Edo era go players. Oota really did forfeit games because he would not shave his hair off in order to play them. Lee Sedol's nickname of Ssen-dol = "Strong Stone", and he really did retire.
>   * Hikaru no Go really is a manga/anime based on a kid thrust into Go greatness after being haunted by a master from the Heian era; said master also haunted Honinbou Shuusaku.
>   * Cho Chikun really is a gift to humanity. You can read a rough translation of [his commentary](https://www.reddit.com/r/baduk/comments/6g0scs/highlight_of_cho_chikun_commentary_on_alphago/) on one of the AlphaGo matches here to see exactly how amazing he is. He is also Korean, although he plays in Japan. 
>   * Professional Go players are ranked from 1-dan (lowest) to 9-dan (highest). Kisei/Meijin/Honinbou &c. are some of the most prestigious Japanese titles that can be won.
>   * The age of drinking in Japan is 20, ergo poor Ichiriki
>   * [AlphaGo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AlphaGo) has had many iterations; the one that beat Lee Sedol is technically called AlphaGo Lee, but I've dropped the distinction in this fic
>   * My poor man's explanation of the MCTS and neural networks is obviously full of handwave, but here is a proper writeup in the form of [DeepMind's general explanation on how AlphaGo works](https://deepmind.com/blog/article/alphago-zero-starting-scratch). Linked at the bottom of that article is also the [Nature article](https://www.nature.com/articles/nature24270.epdf?author_access_token=VJXbVjaSHxFoctQQ4p2k4tRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0PVW4gB86EEpGqTRDtpIz-2rmo8-KG06gqVobU5NSCFeHILHcVFUeMsbvwS-lxjqQGg98faovwjxeTUgZAUMnRQ) with the technical one.
>   * Goke = bowl for keeping Go stones; goban = Go board; joseki/fuseki/yose are sequences of moves in a Go game; moku = points
> 



End file.
